The flames hissed as they sprayed across the shield. This jet of the dragon's didn't carry energy damage alone—it carried physical damage too, and the Adamantium shield held against it only with great strain.
The dragon glanced at the shield with curiosity. No ripple of magic whatsoever; clearly it was no enchanted gear. He couldn't fathom how the mortal realm could possess a metal with heat resistance this high.
Two exchanges in, and Daisy already knew she was nowhere near his match. This three-hundred-year dragon was ferociously strong.
She set aside her misgivings. Her palm flipped over, her fair hand rose, and a silver line shot out in an instant, striking straight for the dragon's eye.
Caught off guard—and still sustaining his fire breath, his body somewhat rigid—the dragon had not anticipated an attack like this at all. The Iron Fist selection, a martial artist's challenge—wasn't this taking cheating way too far?
The Atomic Cutter was as keen as ever, its energy razor-sharp, like a knife slicing through butter. The faint defensive barrier over the dragon's body shattered at a single blow, and then came his eyelid, his lens, his eyeball.
The cutting ray finally punched through the dragon's head and, under Daisy's control, sheared sideways to the right, splitting open the dragon's mouth.
When the ray's energy was at last exhausted, one of the dragon's eyes had vanished into thin air, and a great gash had been opened from the socket down to his jaw. Pale green dragon blood spattered across the ground, and his roar shook the cavern, rattling the earth beneath Daisy's feet.
If the dragon had been a normal creature, that one strike could have left him gravely wounded and dying. Unfortunately the thing was a half-magical being: so long as there was energy in his body, he could repair himself, points of glowing light streaming continuously out of him to mend the carved-apart flesh.
Daisy reached out and threw her pseudo-Lasso of Truth, looping it twice around the dragon's neck, then hauled down with all her strength.
The dragon's skull had just mended a single layer of skin—fragile in the extreme—and the repair was interrupted, blood spraying out in every direction.
"You, a mere mortal, dare to match strength with this old one!" The dragon was furious now. He'd been hurt.
Daisy didn't waste breath. She'd been searching for underground magma or the like the whole time, the way she had against Blonsky before.
Unfortunately K'un-Lun was only a mountain transplanted into another dimension. The mountain itself floated, most unscientifically, in the void, with neither heaven above nor earth below. She searched hard for a good while; there was almost no magma here at all, and even squeezing some out would be useless. Without physical impact behind it, that little flame wouldn't even singe the dragon.
The pseudo-Lasso of Truth bound the dragon's mouth shut, keeping the thing from spitting fire. With one hand gripping the lasso and the other holding her sword, Daisy attacked the dragon's head like a woman possessed.
Any target would do in theory, but Daisy figured striking the head ought to land a critical hit or two. She didn't actually know whether her hunch was right; she just hacked at the dragon's head with her sword, blow after blow.
"Little girl, isn't this cheating of yours a bit much? This is the Iron Fist selection!" The dragon's mouth was bound, but mind-to-mind speech was no trouble for a creature like him.
"Sorry, sorry! When I get back I'll be sure to train my fists properly—let me off just this once!" She found an opening in the dragon's guard and drove the sword into his neck. The Adamantium blade was unstoppable; even on a magical creature, the hide only put up the faintest resistance before the blade plunged straight in, half a meter (1.6 feet) deep, blood splashing across her face.
"Can you fight in the air?" The dragon's claw came slamming down, and Daisy rolled aside, dodging the swipe with something less than grace.
"What?!" Chatting on a mental channel while fighting put a heavy strain on her mental power; she hadn't caught it clearly.
"I'll take that as a yes!" A sly glint crossed the dragon's eyes. He planted his feet, threw his whole body into it, and surged upright, wings beating hard as he charged straight at the cavern wall.
KA-BOOM! With a thunderous crash, the dragon smashed a gaping hole through the cavern, rubble flying everywhere. Daisy jumped in fright—this guy wasn't playing by the rules! During the Iron Fist challenge, the dragon was not allowed to fly!
A normal martial artist had no power of flight. If the dragon took to the sky and rained fire down below, even the greatest martial grandmaster would have to kneel.
But Daisy was in no position to argue. She'd cheated first, the dragon had cheated second; neither had room to call out the other.
The dragon hadn't left that wretched cavern in a very long time, and now he had the perfect excuse—some rule-breaker of a challenger—to fly out and have a look around. He blasted through the cavern that seemed able to withstand a nuke, then tore through three more layers of mountain rock, the whole of K'un-Lun trembling as red light wreathed his body, and burst headlong out of the Sacred Mountain.
He was as jubilant as a horse let loose, which spelled real misery for our Daisy, who'd never been one to rely on raw strength.
She'd meant to fly out under her own power, but the dragon's strength was simply too great; the entire cavern had taken a violent battering. Studying mechanics day in and day out, Daisy needed only one glance to know the cave was coming down. Five years from now, young Danny was probably going to have to take his exam in the open air…
With the whole cave coming down, there would be no safe corner left for her. If she didn't want to be buried inside it, her only choice was to charge out after the dragon.
With no other choice, she did as so many heroes had done before her: she stabbed her longsword into the dragon's neck and hung upside down, riding him out.
The dragon just wanted to take a stroll outside. He could have swatted Daisy off with a single slap, really, but his trial only stayed within the rules so long as Daisy was there—if the challenger was gone, what would that even count as? He chose to ignore her and flew on, single-minded.
Daisy had no dragon hide of her own. Now and then chunks of rubble the size of millstones came hurtling at her, and to keep from falling off the dragon she had to dodge and shift without pause to avoid them.
But there was a limit to dodging. She wasn't Batman from the next franchise over—she wasn't the sort of character who'd dumped every point into the evasion stat—and from time to time the rubble struck home.
The debris came at wicked angles and no slow speed, and one large stone flew straight at her face. Unable to dodge in time, she took it full in the face and cried out, "Ow!" Her high-bridged nose survived the disaster, but the blow caught her tear duct, and with all the dust in the cavern besides, her tears came welling up despite herself.
The Venerable and Lei Kung, watching the spectacle from outside, happened to catch this very moment. Both had excellent eyesight; from over a thousand meters (3,280 feet) up, they could still see it clearly.
"It seems the dragon is angry," the Venerable judged.
Lei Kung nodded in agreement. "Indeed. Even a girl that tough has been driven to tears—the dragon's strength is far beyond imagination. Best the next Iron Fist selection not be spaced so far apart."
While they passed their cool remarks down below, the ordinary folk of K'un-Lun spotted the dragon in the sky too—though at such distance, all an ordinary person could make out was a black dot.
What's that? Where's Daisy? Sorry—their eyesight's no good, they can't see her!
The dragon hadn't left his cavern in centuries, and now that he was back in the open sky, no words could capture his delight. Still, he hadn't entirely forgotten his task, and from afar he loosed another mouthful of flame at Daisy.
Once they'd burst clear of the mountain, Daisy was freed from her unwanted ride. K'un-Lun's gravity differed a little from the outside world's, but not by much, and her power of flight was scarcely affected.